Please chance me for IB in SF; Non-Target

I’m curious to see how I might stack up for SA recruiting next year. Currently, I am:

Class of 2028 (freshman) 
Large non-target (UNC/UWM/UF) 
3.8+ 

Internships (in this order):

F500 Tech Company (software development, with some exposure to strategic M&A as the company was highly acquisitive and this directly impacted my day to day role) 

Early Stage VC (4B AUM, pre-seed investing, not a highly technical role but sourcing was brutal and got some cool stories meeting founders)

Later Stage VC (500m fund, but larger check sizes and less shitty AI investments, investing at Series B/C. The diligence was much more comprehensive here)

Tech Buyout Shop (300m fund doing pure tech buyouts)

Extracurriculars:

I’m not at all involved in the finance community in my school (STEM Major) but am in several different software/tech related student orgs. Given that I go to a large school with lots of students seeking banking internships, thought it would be relevant to mention that I’m not in a finance club and almost every student from my school doing banking out of undergrad has been in one. This will greatly impact my ability to get referrals at the very few banks running OCR.

Networking:

I have no family connections, and am not a URM. I’m not the most charismatic person on the planet, but I’m not a complete dud either - most experiences networking so far for previous internships have ended in positive outcomes (referral to another employee, offering to pass along resume, etc.)

Interviewing:

I might get some hate for this, but after a long time pursuing software engineering, banking technicals don’t seem too difficult. I’ve committed all the guides to memory, and I have a good understanding of certain industries that I’m interested in. I can generally walk through off-guide questions well, but obviously have been tripped up a few times too. By winter I anticipate making no mistakes here because it’s the one thing I have control over.

My Goal:

I’m hoping to land a SA seat a TMT team in SF. My school is not close to SF and not a target for the region either. If I did get an offer from some of these groups/firms, I would be the first person from my school that did so in a long, long time. Any alumni that we do have are on the east coast. However, I don’t want to do IB if I’m not deeply involved in the tech ecosystem (which can almost only be done in SF) and would be fine hanging up the cleats and working in tech directly (but never consulting).

Would appreciate some honest feedback on how realistic this is. Recruiting is time consuming and I’m willing to spend that time, but I want to have the right expectations going into this process. My close friends are not interested in this industry and an outside perspective would be really helpful. 


 

5 Comments
 

This is all swell but as a Non target the only thing that matters for you is networking

thats all that mattered for me and thats all that will ever matter for us

Getting our foot in the door is the hardest part brotha

get on the phone and start dialing

 

Biggest barrier will be networking. Might be tough if you don't have company alumni. If you're not concerned with name recognition or whatever, I'd target smaller firms or purely VC/MM Tech IB given your experience

 

What is UWM? Anyway, you can make it happen. Just network ruthlessly. My best recommendation to someone like you is to hit the ground running in September-November and then actually try to take a trip to SF before recruiting kicks off. I did something similar and stayed in literally the grimiest hotel ever in NYC for 5 days and was able to meet with 10 people who have helped me immensely. You need to get your face in front of people and if you're not sending 30-40 outreach emails per day on Tuesday-Thursday, you're not trying hard enough. 

 

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